Dredd 3D // Review
Nolan took the darkest side of the knight for his Batman trilogy and now we get Dredd - the lawman that puts the mental in judgemental.
Judge Dredd is considered by many to be one of the best British comic book characters ever created. He is also one of many icons to have been ruined by Hollywood in their ham-fisted attempts to bring it to screen, so my feelings were mixed when the latest reboot was announced. Is this going to trample (again) all over 2000 AD’s finest, or redeem it as the dark masterpiece that it is?
Luckily for us, times have changed. We are allowed to see our heroes as they were created - conflicted and complicated, with elements that blur good and bad.
We had Moore’s masked vigilante in V for Vendetta; Nolan took the darkest side of the knight for his Batman trilogy and now we get Dredd - the lawman that puts the mental in judgemental.
Set in a nightmarish, future world where nuclear devastation has left humanity clinging to walled-in ruins of the past world, the only people keeping any type of order are the Judges. These post-apocalyptic purveyors of justice are able to convict, sentence and execute, all with one pull of the trigger. Dredd (Karl Urban) and his rookie partner Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) get busy cleaning up Megacity One from evil drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and her slow motion drug that, coincidentally, looks really cool in 3d.
Queue smashed heads and crushed larynxes as the judges tear the city apart with an equal amount of barbarity and violence as those they bring to justice. The irony of this is never lost in a screenplay from Alex Garland who, in this setting of bad vs badder, manages to do a good job of keeping you rooting in the intended Judge-shaped direction.
So will this film be the law as far as fans are concerned, or Stallone’s helmet? Judge for yourself.
Smiley
